Torment In Hebron

October 7, 2001|By Tim Collie Staff Writer

Hebron, WEST BANK — In a region rife with flashpoints, this ancient city, once home to Abraham and King David, is one of the most explosive.

Here religion and nationalism clash in angry, extreme forms of violence on a daily basis. As bombings, shootings and military attacks escalate around Israel and the West Bank, they are only beginning to reach the level that Hebron has been experiencing for a year, since the intifada began.

Palestinian snipers in the mountains surrounding the Jewish settlements regularly pick off both Jewish children and adults. Mobs of Jewish settlers -- men, women and teenagers -- attack Palestinians weekly in the streets and firebomb their homes. The Israeli army -- sometimes attacked by settlers and Palestinians alike -- often shells the town to stifle political demonstrations.

Hebron is the only major West Bank city whose center has remained under direct Israeli military control throughout the intifada. The combination of religious militancy on both sides and a curfew imposed on a fifth of its population for the past year have turned it into a political tinderbox. The chronic violence has grown to such a level that an international monitoring group composed of European officers, attacked and threatened by settlers, has withdrawn from the frontlines.

`War,' not `intifada'

"With bombs going off in Jerusalem, in Netanya, throughout Israel, I think people are finally seeing what we've been up against for nearly a year here," said David Wilder, part of a group of settlers who see it as their mission to guard Jewish holy sites. Hebron is home to the second most religious site in Judaism, the Tomb of the Patriarchs, which is also revered by Muslims as the Abraham Mosque.

"I don't call this an intifada. I call it a war," Wilder said.

Hebron's mayor has a different interpretation. "These Jewish settlers are total fanatics who won't be happy until they drive all of the Arabs out of Hebron," said Mustafa Natsheh. "They destroyed the commercial center of town, they've shut down banks and bus stations. They've tried to divert the water supply for pools and gardens. And all under the protection of Israeli soldiers."

On Friday, Israeli tanks and troops moved in and took over strategic high ground that overlooks the settlements. On Saturday, the Palestinian Cabinet demanded that gunmen stop firing at Israel, saying they are hurting Palestinian interests.

Friday's incursion, during which five Palestinians were killed and 45 wounded, came in response to an attack on Jewish worshipers on Wednesday. Two settlers were wounded by Palestinian snipers.

The attacks and the Israeli response underscore how any incident in this region could shake the emerging coalition against terrorism. Arab governments, because of the intifida, refuse to be involved in any perceived alliance with Israel. Yet Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Thursday suggested the country could be abandoned in its own war on terrorism as the United States gears up for an apparent operation in Afghanistan.

In such a situation, any shooting, any bombing, any military incursion, carries a much greater weight than it did before Sept. 11. The Israeli military has divided Hebron into two military zones, H-1 and H-2, to protect 500 militant Jewish settlers from an estimated 120,000 surrounding Palestinians. It is H-2, about 20 percent of the city including the Tomb of the Patriarchs, where the settlers have staked their claim and where the most violent clashes occur.

Hebron sits in undisputed Palestinian territory, the chief town in the southern half of the West Bank and the largest industrial center in the territories. But it's a trophy of such importance to Israel's religious right that any peace plan giving it away could provoke a major rebellion, some observers fear.

Like many ancient cities, Hebron begins in the center of a valley and radiates outward. The settlers are hunkered down in city center, around the Tomb of the Patriarchs. Their modern apartments, built atop ruins, are in the middle of shuttered Palestinian homes and businesses. Security is provided by soldiers and a settler network linked by walkie-talkies.

After being driven out by a massacre in the late 1920s, Jews returned to Hebron after Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1967 Middle East War. About 15 percent of the settlers are American-born; the rest were born in Israel or a variety of countries in Europe and the Middle East. Because the families are large, almost two-thirds of Hebron's settlers are children or teenagers.

Around them, in large hillside houses built up each side of the valley, are Palestinians, who shoot through gaps in sandbags at settler apartments. In March, a sniper killed a 10-month-old baby, Shahlevet Pass, in downtown Hebron.

On the slopes overlooking the valley the Israeli military has taken over Palestinian homes and has turned them into heavily fortified mortar and tank positions.